Add additional nodes to the cluster

To add additional nodes to the cluster

Open Cluster Administrator.

In the Open Connection to Cluster dialog box that appears, in Action, select Add nodes to cluster. Then in Cluster or server name, either type the name of an existing cluster, select a name from the drop-down list box, or click Browse to search for an available cluster.

Click OK to continue.

The Add Nodes Wizard appears. Click Next to continue.

Upon completion of the Add Nodes Wizard, click Finish.

Caution

If you are using a shared storage device, when you power on and start the operating system, it is of vital importance that only one node has access to the cluster disk. Otherwise the cluster disks can become corrupted. To prevent the corruption of the cluster disks, shut down all but one cluster node, or use other techniques (for example, Logical Unit Number or LUN masking, selective presentation, or zoning) to protect the cluster disks, before creating the cluster. Once the Cluster service is running properly on one node, the other nodes can be added and configured simultaneously.

Notes

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group might be able to perform this procedure. As a security best practice, consider using Run as to perform this procedure.

You can also add a node to an existing cluster from the File menu, by first clicking Open Connection to connect to an existing cluster. Then, you can open the Add Nodes Wizard from the File menu, by clicking New, then Node.

You can safely cancel and restart the installation process.

If the computer you are logged onto is already a node on an existing cluster, Cluster Administrator will connect to that cluster by default.

After you have added new nodes to a server cluster, use Cluster Administrator to fail over the cluster disks and verify that they come back online. For information on how to do this, see "To test whether group resources can fail over" in Related Topics.

To add nodes to an existing cluster after an unattended setup, run a script to invoke the cluster /add: command and supply all the necessary configuration information on the command line. For information about unattended setup, see "Planning for unattended setup" in Related Topics. For more information on the cluster command line syntax, see "Cluster" in Related Topics.

Allow the process of adding or evicting nodes to complete before changing the quorum in any way. For example, if you are adding a node, wait until that process is complete before changing from a single quorum device cluster to a majority node set cluster.

Information about functional differences

Your server might function differently based on the version and edition of the operating system that is installed, your account permissions, and your menu settings. For more information, see Viewing Help on the Web.